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A couple of weeks ago I had planned to go to Coburg Farmers Market but didn’t end up going. I kicked myself later on when I saw an Instagram photo of a new stall called Sandwitch and how they had vegan options. Aaand how I had missed out because I stayed home. I checked out Sandwitch’s Facebook and Instagram: ‘enchanted plant based North African street food’ and kicked myself even more.

Well today Sandwitch were back at Coburg Farmers Market (which has now moved to the new location at Coburg Primary School on Bell Street) and I wasn’t going to miss out. The two pita-style sandwiches on display, both in ‘Moroccan style bread’ looked great and I went with the Hash-Burger ($12): ‘sliced warm eggplant and potato fritter, on a bed of slow-cooked red delish capsicum matbucha salad and fresh lettuce’, seeing as the description contained three of my favourite words (eggplant, potato and fritter).

This was fantastic and immediately rocked in to my top three favourite sandwiches/pita foods. I wish I’d taken the big camera to get better photos but I only had my phone on me today. Beautiful fresh flavours, perfect eggplant and bread. So, so good:

And because it was so good, it meant I had to go back and splurge on the Colli-sour sandwich: ‘crispy cauliflower between layers of pickles, green salad and topped with preserved lemon tahini’. Sure, it meant I ran out of money to buy, well, vegetables but hey I now have a new number one sandwich in my life. This was so freaking good:

… and while I was there, I tried the ‘sweet dessert delight ($8): coconut milk cream, flavoured with rosewater, topped with crushed nuts, coconut, 7 spices and hibiscus syrup’. Now, I don’t even like rosewater much but because the two sandwiches were so good, I wanted to try it. This was really good too, no overpowering rosewater and not too sweet either. I’m getting it again next time:

The hummus menu item ($10) is gluten free. There was some eggplant and salad sitting in the middle of a plate of hummus so perhaps it gets served with veggies like that. It looked pretty good! I also had a sample of a delicious lentil chickpea soup, which I’d like to have in the future.

Sandwitch are at farmers markets, so keep an eye on their Facebook and Instagram pages to learn where they’ll be next.

That’s a bit of a strange title– a What I Ate followed by a cemetery tour. But it is what it is and as I’ve slacked off blogging big time, I thought I’d put it all in one big post.

First up, a bunch of eats over many weeks. Maybe months as I’ve just checked the date of my last What I Ate: March!!! How did that happen?! Anyway, I can’t even remember what some of these are, but I’ll do my best. First up is a Gardein beefless burger. I prefer to make my own patties but every now and then I’ll get a packet of Gardein:

A basic too-dry tofu veg meal made with Japanese curry powder:

I found this terrible photo of a Suzy Spoon’s veg shnitzel I had months ago. The shnitzels were okay but probably not something I’d splurge on again:

Cornflour coated tofu and veg with a heap of home made gomasio:

A gyros roll made with the Veggie Gyros packet stuff by Viana:

A sweet potato and kidney beans peanut stew with pearl cous cous:

From Vegan Sandwiches Save The Day, the country sausage sandwiches (using tofu instead of tempeh):

I think this tofu was marinated in a little ginger, garlic, soy and orange juice then thrown in to a messy sandwich:

A simple bean and veg ratatouille:

Friends of Coburg Cemetery has been running some tours this year, so my son and I signed up for their Monuments and Headstones tour. It was one of those sunny but very cold days where taking photos with cold hands was a little difficult. I go past Coburg Cemetery a fair bit and there are a lot of very old graves that never have any flowers or obvious signs of visitors. I’ve always wondered who these people were and so when I heard about the tour, I booked straight in. There are a few famous names and one surprise was the plain nondescript grave of Charles Web Gilbert, a renowned sculptor known for works such as the Matthew Flinders sculpture outside St Paul’s Cathedral in Melbourne. There’s an information sign next to this grave, and other graves too.

True North in Coburg is a place I return to often– good food, friendly staff and right near where I do most of my shopping. I’ve blogged about True North before, but as I’ve gone back so many more times, I thought it was time for an update. Annoyingly there were a few times I forgot to take my camera.

The True North menu offers something for everyone with lots of vegan-option icons. In the past I reviewed the Reuben sandwich with a thumbs up. On my camera-less visits, I’ve also enjoyed the black bean tacos for dinner with a side of thick cut fries with lime aioli which appears on the current dinner menu.

From the current Breakfast-Lunch menu is the vegan Chipotle Chicken sandwich (shown below). True North make some great sandwiches. I’ve also had a couple other fab sandwiches which aren’t on the menu any more. One was the Hot Poppy and another had, IIRC, a big mushroom with some tofu and Korean bbq flavours. They’ve all been really good and full of flavour.

Another current Breakfast-Lunch meal are the cherry pancakes. Lovely and fluffy with a a coconut based cream on top:

The counter always has some sweet treats with vegan options like muffins and biscuity-cookie delights. Other times there are cakes and this is the vegan lamington cake. The serving size was pretty generous and I couldn’t finish it because I was stuffed:

What I also like about True North are the events they hold. Truthfully I haven’t been able to go yet but they’re so awesome looking I just stalk all the photos on Facebook. There are Pie or Die nights, featuring pies (some vegan) from Blackberry Belle Pies. There’s Thursday night $10 curry+beer/soft drink and Royal Rumble Sundays with old school 1980s WWF wrestling action and burritos. There was also a Trash and Treasure market back in May with Nadia’s No-Dogs vegan hotdogs.

True North is fine for kids. I’ve taken mine a couple of times and have seen parents and toddlers in there too. My kids have fun looking at all the knick knacks around the place (cats!!!) and a visit to the toilet is worth it for a Slimer statue and Mr. T poster.

Related posts:

Shuki and Louisa, famous for their falafel and dips, have today opened their Very Good Falafel shop in Brunswick. I’ve been a fan of their falafel in pita for a while now, happily queuing for fifteen minutes at their stall on Wednesdays at the Melbourne University Farmers Market. It’s a fifteen minute queue sometimes, because so many people are fans and shows you how popular this very good falafel is! This is my usual from Shuki and Louisa’s market stalls:

So, I’m around Sydney Road more often than Melbourne Uni and I reacted with much glee to the news that Shuki and Louisa were opening a falafel shop in Brunswick. There are other falafel options around that area, but seeing as I make the trek to Melbourne Uni just for their falafel, I already pegged Very Good Falafel as my number one felafel place to visit in this area. Inside, there are some tables with bench style seats and stools, as well as the benches along the serving area and front window:

I met up with Johanna from Green Gourmet Giraffe for a falafel lunch. We took a look at the platters of food on display (beautiful looking potatoes!) and asked about the serving options. You can have your falafel in a pita (like the photo up above) or on a plate with sides and/or salad. The menu isn’t all vegan and the vegan options are, I believe, the falafel in the pita or on the plate with the sides. I like the falafel in pita so much that I was tempted to get it even though I’ve had it many times now, but I ended up getting the plate option. This was made up of three falafel balls with a tahini sauce, those beautiful potatoes, sliced fennel and radish salad and cooked leafy greens with flaked almonds. I got a pita on the side as well. A really satisfying and delicious lunch and so good to have yet another tasty vegan option available in the Brunswick/Coburg area. Johanna and I got the same meal with the pita and it totaled $26:

Shuki and Louisa’s website lists their stockists and the markets they will be at. The website also mentions the use of locally sourced ingredients, including chickpeas from Louisa’s family farm.

With fresh ingredients and falafel that, for me, are just right with their crunchy outside and soft insides, I see quite a few return visits to Very Good Falafel happening. Either that, or you’ll find me in the queue at farmers’ markets 🙂

Hurrah for the Coburg Farmers Market now being held weekly! Previously I’d be waking up on a Saturday planning to go then realising it wasn’t on that day. Then I’d forget to go the following week. And so on and so on. I last blogged about my visit to the market back in mid 2014 so it was time for an update.

The stalls do seem to change a little as I went a couple of weeks ago and some stalls were not there today (or some stalls today weren’t there last time). Today was ace market weather though, one of those perfect windy autumn days.

As this is a vegan blog, I’m only showing the stalls that would appeal to vegan shoppers or people wanting plant based products. Being a farmers market there are of course non-vegan stalls but yep, it’s all a-vegan here in Veganopoulous town!

Sprouts, salad mix, grasses at Urban Caterpillar Microgreens. I was very tempted by the mustard and buckwheat salad mix but went for the pea shoots instead. These are all grown in Newport, a suburb not too far from the Melbourne CBD (it’s the suburb next door to Williamstown):

I was glad to see Three Bridges Apples were back. Beautiful juicy apples, not like the tasteless chalky balls of disappointment I’ve bought from the supermarket recently. I’m assuming these are grown in Three Bridges, which is about a one hour and forty-five minute drive east of Melbourne:

I also picked up some chestnuts. Now I can live my dream and play conkers! Whatever the hell that is, all I know is that it involves strings and kids saying “I say!” a lot. Enid Blyton story kids played conkers. And seemed to spend a lot of time walking over stiles:

Apple Cider from Snakes & Ladders. I haven’t tried it yet but will next time. The fruit is all grown, mashed, fermented and bottled in the Goulburn Valley region:

Mandarines from, I think, Doron Talmi Citrus though the fellow working on the stall mentioned the business name is Sweetease(?). They also sell freshly squeezed orange juice, including blood orange. The fruit is grown in Colignan, just south of Mildura:

Some really nice balsamic vinegar and sauces from Sticky Balsamic. The fig is really nice (I ended up buying it). The salted caramel coconut is vegan too and used as a dessert sauce. All produced in Geelong:

Fresh berries, syrups and jams from Kookaberry Farm in Wandin. The Kookaberry Farm website lists an impressive number of medal placings for their products:

Weyhill Farm Garlic. These looked beautiful in the sun! All grown in the hills of South Gippsland. On their About page on their website, Weyhill’s owners say “we fell in love with the place on after taking a wrong turn on a weekend drive”– love it!

Olives and olive oil from Lisadurne Hill. The Hojiblanca contains honey according to the website (I just checked it now), at the time I took the photo I was assuming it was oil without non-vegan products so vegans, please keep that in mind as there are samples on the table for tastings. The olives are brine cured:

2 & 5’s website says “we are a social enterprise set up to address food insecurity in the Northern Suburbs of Geelong by improving access to affordable, sustainable, fresh and healthy food. This is achieved by providing high-quality fresh produce through production and retail. Corio and Norlane are seen as areas of socio-economic disadvantage and the residents have been identified as being at risk of food insecurity in research done by the State Government Neighbourhood Renewal Project. We believe that by making fresh fruit and vegetables more accessible, food security can be dramatically improved.” Great stuff! We have quite a few jars of this jam at home, as well as the tomato relish and today I added the green bean mustard pickle to my collection. 2 & 5 also sell vegetables:

Update: I don’t know why my pictures of Flinders Sourdough didn’t make it here and I didn’t notice I’d left them out when my post was published! Here are the vegan loaves, the buns weren’t vegan but all these were. I bought a loaf of the fig sourdough:

Beautiful herbs and produce on display at MKD Services:

Peninsula Fresh Organics had loads of brightly coloured veggies (the carrots in the top photo are from their stall). All certified organic and grown in Baxter on the Mornington Peninsula:

I hope I have all the photos correct, I have a sneaking suspicion I have mixed up some of the stall holder names.

Coburg Farmers Market is held on Saturday from 8am to 1pm at Coburg North Primary School. Entry is by gold coin donation. There’s ample parking around the side streets or you can catch the 527 bus which stops right outside the school. Bell Street is a short-ish walk away so the market is also accessible via the 903 bus, 513 bus and 55 West Coburg tram.

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Hello and welcome! I'm Faye and I blog about vegan life here in Melbourne, Australia. I love connecting readers with news of events, dining options, products, services and anything else that can help people already living, or those considering switching to a more plant based lifestyle. Family, my Greek roots, secondhand shopping and my home town are also a focus on my blog.